United Way of the Greater Triangle and Citrix Partner for Social Change

Creating bold, new partnerships to tackle social challenges in the Triangle

Morrisville, NC—United Way of the Greater Triangle is giving corporate partners ways of using intellectual capital to address social issues, leading to broader community involvement to address challenges such as hunger, poverty, and childhood literacy. The partnership with Citrix extended the opportunity for the Business Development team to use their skill sets to work towards solutions on food insecurity in the Triangle; integrate volunteer opportunities with their work; and practice skill-building to provide more well-rounded professional experiences that will lead to a more fulfilling career while helping to improve our community.

Citrix, a multinational software company leads the world in the secure delivery of apps and data, uniting virtualization, mobility management, networking and SaaS solutions to enable new ways for businesses and people to work better. Citrix has been ranked by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers and one of the most Innovative Companies. The collaboration between Citrix and United Way has allowed both entities to implement a new engagement model, one where private and public sector leaders can explore what nontraditional philanthropy can look like as they both worked towards solutions and project management of the 2016 Social Innovation Challenge: 100K(ids) Hungry No More. This Challenge has a prize pool of up to $100,000 for the best ideas for reducing childhood hunger in the Triangle.

The Citrix Business Development team, led by Senior Manager Bill O’Boyle, became significantly invested in leading this community initiative once they learned how pervasive childhood hunger is in our region. They went as far as adopting the Challenge as part of their Q4 Key Performance Indicators and treated the metrics for this project the same as they would with one of their corporate partners. The Business Development team helped raise awareness on the issue of childhood hunger in the Triangle, especially in the tech sector of our region, and they undertook fundraising towards the prize pool.

“We were really interested in utilizing this opportunity to help create a teachable model that empowers employees,” remarked O’Boyle. “Our team likes to solve big problems so the thought of being able to use our day-to-day expertise to help solve Triangle Childhood Hunger was very attractive. It’s unimaginable to think that many kids are food insecure around us.”

Together, Citrix and United Way built a unique engagement model that will provide employees at local companies professional development opportunities to hone their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, while tackling real and urgent challenges. This kind of innovative partnership could not only inspire new value-propositions between untraditional partners, it could also transform the kinds of solutions we could see in years to come. The engagement model that has been crafted is replicable.

“Thinking about applying what you do every day to help solve complex social issues will be necessary if we are to eradicate community issues like hunger, illiteracy, and poverty,” commented Allison Warren Barbour, Senior Vice President of Resource Development and Engagement at UWGT. “The Citrix model of overlaying a company’s business model on an issue that we are working on has inspired other organizations to do the same. By disrupting the traditional way of tackling these challenges, we will certainly arrive at scalable, long-term solutions, and our community will be all the better for it.”

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About United Way of the Greater Triangle (UWGT)United Way actively mobilizes the caring power of communities to build resources, focus investments, and foster partnerships to improve lives and inspire generations of achievement in four North Carolina counties, Durham, Johnston, Orange, and Wake. A new focus on families and children in low income households uses a collaborative approach to dramatically change the course of their futures. Learn more at www.unitedwaytriangle.org. 2400 Perimeter Park Drive, Suite 150 | Morrisville, North Carolina 27560 | 919.460.8687

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